4.84 miles 3h 27m ascent 211m boot-wetness: extreme
Nateby Common-Nine Standards Rigg circular
This was day 3 of our Kirkby Stephen walks, and following the previous day’s exhausting outing, called for a straightforward route that wasn’t too demanding. Indeed, since it was to be a short walk we decided not to take lunch. We could eat in comfort after the walk. Can you hear the distant maniacal laughter?
Continue reading6.69 miles 5h 3m ascent 332m
Aisgill Moor-Eden Springs circular
Between two sister moorland rills
There is a spot that seems to lie
Sacred to flow’rets of the hills,
And sacred to the sky.
We had slightly damp boots but the weather was decent. It was neither a particularly long walk, nor much of a climb but… Du lieber Gott! … it was a grind. I slept for 12 hours that night. That said, I think it was my favourite section of the Eden Way. There is something atmospheric about a wild moorland walk.
Continue reading6.30 miles 3h 53m ascent 247m
Thrang-Hellgill Bridge circular
And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
The Highwayman. Alfred Noyes
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding—riding—riding—
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.
Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard.
He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred.
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter, Bess, the landlord’s daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.
The Eden Way guide offers two routes from Thrang to Hell Gill Bridge, one is closer to the river but more rustic, and one further from the river but on a better path and passing the Watercut Eden Benchmark. I had always intended walking both of these routes but probably as part of separate walks, but a last minute hiccough left us with only one car and a need for a shorter walk. Making these two routes into a circular walk allowed us to go ahead. This took us by origin of the River Eden as a named waterway, as well as the final, and most impressive, benchmark sculpture. I had not realised we would have to ford Hell Gill above its waterfall but that just added to the experience.
Continue reading10.85 miles 5h 48m ascent 227m
– Eden Way: 9.47 miles 4h 50m ascent 201m
– Poetry Path, 1.38 miles 58m ascent 26m
Sandford-Kirkby Stephen-Stenkrith
This section of the Eden Way took us from Sandford Bridge to Stenkrith Park in Kirkby Stephen. It has pleasant riverside paths through fields and woodland, short sections through farmland and pavements through Kirkby Stephen. There are couple of miles of road-walking on quiet country roads. But it was not a vanilla hike. Overgrown paths saw us stung by nettles and snatched by brambles; there were stiles to try the patience of a saint; the odd navigation lapse kept us on our toes; and finding the section’s Eden Benchmark proved challenging. But the weather was good and we had the Kirkby Stephen Poetry Trail as a dessert.
Continue reading8.68 miles 4h 43m ascent 219m
Colby-Sandford
We had finished the last section a little way off the Eden Way. The closest parking had been where Colby Bridge crosses Hoff Beck, half a mile off the Way. Luckily, a public right of way runs alongside the beck between the Eden Way and where the car was parked. Unfortunately, it was not obvious how we should reach it.
A gate led to the right of way but it was not easily opened and the route beyond was overgrown with brambles. Another few paces and it was impassable. But the fates smiled on us. A woman appeared from the house beside us and told us how to reach the path. We walked through her back garden (with her permission) to a farm gate with a yellow right-of-way plaque. I imagine the original right of way had been altered at some time.
6.56 miles 3h 30m ascent 201m
Polmaddy-Castlemaddy
A simple walk from the parking area at Polmaddy, up the forestry track to Castlemaddy then back by the Pack Road to the Polmaddy Fermtoun.
Continue reading5 miles 3h 4m ascent 432m
Signalhøjden, Narsarsuaq, Greenland
Breakfast: scrambled eggs, crispy bacon and mushrooms. View: an iceberg strewn fjord, on one side Erik the Red had established a Norse outpost in 986 AD, on the other, the US built airstrip at Narsarsuaq. A small aeroplane, a Cherokee or something like it, rose from the runway and climbed over us.
Continue reading7.74 miles 5h 9m ascent 252m
The Ordnance Survey shows a footpath between Polmaddy and Carsphairn. For more than 500 years it was part of the main route through the Glenkens to the south coast. It was once part of a network of routes across SW Scotland bringing pilgrims from Glasgow and Edinburgh to the cradle of christianity in Scotland at Whithorn. King James IV used the route to visit the shrine of Saint Ninian in the 1490s. But with construction of the turnpike (now the A713) the old route fell into disuse. With forestry planting and upland land improvements in modern times the path was beginning to disappear. Parts had become impassable. The Glenkens Pilgrims’ Way project spent three years rejuvenating the route and reopened it in 2020.
The Glenkens Pilgrims Way runs from the abandoned settlement at Polmaddy to the bridge just south of Carsphairn. Our plan was to visit the ruins at Polmaddy and walk the Way, there and back. Fallen trees meant the path proved a little more trying than it might have been. To be fair, the Forestry Commission website had said the path was closed by storm damage. We did manage to scramble over, climb under or find a way around the fallen trees but it slowed us down quite a bit and when we reached Bennan, the wee hill above Carsphairn, I decided to forego the final walk down the hill (and the enevitable re-ascent). So we turned back and retraced our steps.
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